Alien Registration Number  - Self Portrait -

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Group Exhibition / 2003 / Kyoto Seika University, Kyoto, Japan

An installation presented in a stairwell courtyard. The three binoculars look down upon a sheet of paper fallen upon the ground below. This paper is the document of personal identification, a copy of an Alien Registration Certificate. Each set of binoculars focuses upon a different section of the text, highlighting “Female” “Number: B176404263” and “Special Permanent Resident”. As the viewer enters the courtyard space below then they come to realize that the binoculars they just looked through are now focused upon themselves.
Looking through the binoculars brings to the eye a condition of “control”, while delivering a glimpse of the uncertain condition in which the status of “special permanent resident” and the rights it brings in everyday life are bequeathed by the system of ‘nation’. This is not a position seen only through the binoculars, as the words seen through the binoculars may refer to oneself, in a device which points to reality that within the simple structure of watcher and the watched, this is in fact one and the same person.